Selling the DRaMa

Last night we rented "Walk the Line" from Hollywood Video, brought it home, and popped it into the computer. Lo and behold, it won't play because of a DRM copy protection that thinks my monitor and graphics card don't belong together. All of my hardware is legitimate, I paid money to rent the video, and I don't get to watch it. Next I tried my Playstation 2 as a DVD player. Again, the DVD won't play because of the copy protection. Finally, I tried my laptop. Again, it refused to play. Three perfectly legitimate devices and not one can play "Walk the Line" because of the DRM copy protection. That kind of ruins your night, you know?

Tonight I was reading an article on IGN.com and came across a quote that sums up exactly what I was feeling yesterday:

"Rampant piracy is just unserved customers" - Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development, Valve Software

If I get a legitimate copy of a movie and can't play it on legitimate hardware, doesn't that make the pirated version more valuable than your frisbee? Can't you get it through your thick skulls!? I want to get the movie legitimately! I want to pay money for it! Stop kicking your own butts! Stop ruining your own business!

Prince of Thieves

It is a well established fact that the music industry takes advantage of artists to such an extreme that it is robbery in fact, if not in law. Based on this fact, many people feel that there is no harm in downloading music illegally, after all, you're just robbing the robbers. It's heroic in a way, like Robin Hood.

This is a misguided line of thought. Robin Hood and his Merry Men had no say over the laws by which they were unfairly governed. On the other hand, you and I have the power to change the laws of the land. The laws that the music industry exploits were put into place by officials that we elected. If we would like to overturn their corruption, it should be done through the rule of law. Of course, this requires time. Public opinion cannot be altered overnight. Fortunately, it is possible and it will happen. Until then, we should subject ourselves to the rule of laws that we ourselves created.

Trust and Internet Safety

"How much?" That is the question that every parent must answer about the control they exercise over their children's internet usage. How much should parents restrict a child's website access? How much should they monitor the websites their child visits? How much should they be monitoring email and chat to ensure their child's safety? Taking an authoritarian approach will certainly help to keep the child safe, but it sacrifices privacy. On the other hand, being overly lax about monitoring can be equivalent to leaving them alone in a strange city - that kid's toast.

What it comes down to is trust. A parent cannot reasonably trust their five year old to make decisions about people who are safe to interact with, nor about content that is suitable for viewing. However, a sixteen year old should be capable of such decisions. This is where trust comes in. Some sixteen year olds will, over time, demonstrate their ability to make responsible decisions, on and off the computer. They should be given your full trust, and only receive the occasional check on browser history. Other sixteen year olds will have demonstrated themselves less trustworthy than a five year old, and should be closely monitored, or restricted from the computer altogether. There is an entire spectrum in between these two extremes, and the level of monitoring should correspond to their ability to be responsible.

Before I finish, I'd like to add one caveat. No matter how much trust a child has earned from their parents, as long as they are under your care, the computer should be placed in a location where it is visible to anyone. It's not even necessary to scrutinize what is on the screen, the presence of others in the room is enough to make a child think twice when tempted to be irresponsible online. Privacy and safety are both important, but as a parent your responsibility is primarily to the latter with a balance to the former.

Open Module Software

Software development typically comes in two flavors. First, the classic style of development is to have a dedicated team of developers slave over the code until it congeals into your product. Second, the open source approach, in which anyone and everyone can scrutinize the code and provide fixes or new functionality. Businesses tend to prefer the first approach because it keeps their code hidden and therefore users must pay for the code in order to use it. The second approach, on the other hand, allows for quick debugging on a wide range of platforms and usage situations. Can a business have the best of both worlds?

Game development in particular must have a closed source, or the game will quickly be distributed and its value to the developer lost. In such a situation, I think a modular approach would be ideal. Certain key pieces of the code can be open sourced to users who can help with blackbox testing. In fact, almost all code could be open sourced, but the artwork withheld. The engine of the game could be supplied, but with a very simple level, and filler artwork. Testers can help debug the engine code, but the same testers would still be interested in buying the game, essentially paying for content. The license for the code could contain a non-compete agreement for anyone who wishes to use the code. This same model could be extrapolated to other types of software, providing the basic engine for testing, but withholding key content.

Open Source, Open World

Open source software has been important in creating a level playing field for people around the world. Software is now part of almost every business, so providing free software and access to source code allows businesses an equal chance to move their product. However, software is only part of the equation in any business.

Recently, my wife showed me a sewing pattern she had found on a website called Burdastyle: Open Source Sewing. Suddenly, a light came on in my mind. Open sourcing software is extremely important, but each industry has its own specialized set of data that could be open sourced. If the foundational dataset from each industry is open sourced, then small businesses will have an easier time launching new ideas. What would set companies apart and allow some to be successful would be the ability to innovate, specialize, or have some good ol' creativity. A new home builder could start making homes from blueprints that are freely available, then specialize their homes to a specific clientèle. An auto maker could start with a vehicle spec they found online, then innovate the design in some way to get a leg up on the competition.

Unfortunately, most industry players won't be interested in giving up even the smallest amount of data to their competition. Creating an open source movement in non-software industries will require a dedicated set of industry geeks to gather online in their own pseudo companies to share ideas. Why would they bother? For the prestige, for the fun, for the greater good. That's how the software geeks were motivated.

Privacy in Thought

This post is written in response to this article on New Scientist.com

Yesterday, Michael Callahan, co-founder of Ambient Corporation, demonstrated a neckband that allows for "telepathic" chat. The neckband can sense signals being sent from the brain to the vocal cords and translate them into computerized text or speech, even if no words are actually spoken. While this is still much different from actual mind reading, in that the sub-vocalization must be intentional on the user's part, it demonstrates the potential for tapping into the brain's signals. This brings up an ethical dilemma. Certainly, tapping into brain signals can be very useful in aiding the disabled. In theory, sight could be restored to the blind, hearing to the deaf, mobility to the disabled. On the other hand, there is the potential that technology could be developed to tap into your inner most thoughts. Even taking the current technology a step further to read audio signals that were never intended to leave the mind would present a serious privacy issue. In a world where panopticon is becoming reality, our thoughts may become our last refuge from peering eyes. We should protect our privacy of thought and never take the step into true mind reading.

Women in Computing

Why are there so few women compared with men in Computer Science? My wife has no interest in Computer Science whatsoever, nor does she have interest in any of the hard sciences. In order to learn more about the nature versus nurture aspects of why women often avoid the sciences, I asked her questions about her personal experiences. What I found is that she never felt pressured to avoid the sciences. She understands that the opportunity is there if she wishes to take it. She feels innately drawn to other subjects like history, art, and health. She is clearly not unhappy about the lack of science in her life, but is this due to her nature as a woman, or the culture she was brought up in?

What I saw in the family I grew up in was that my sisters were introduced to computers at the same time as my brother and I. They also enjoyed using them, but my brother and I were obsessive about them. I believe the culture in my home gave my sisters equal incentive to learn about computers. The difference was the ability to tinker obsessively. I would spend hours to figure out new things that the computer could do; to my sisters that was boring. In my opinion it is the male tinkering obsession that creates the gender gap in Computer Science. Is the obsession caused by nurture or nature? It is most certainly both.

Ultra High Speed Communication

Written in response to this article.

Recently researchers at Alcatel-Lucent were able to transmit data at 16.4 Tbps over an optical connection. As another reader of the article pointed out, that's fast enough to transmit the entire contents of the library of congress (20 TB) in under ten seconds. The applications have not yet been written and the hardware not yet created that can take advantage of such speeds. Possible applications would be telepresence, streaming video in its original format, massively multiplayer action games, and remote robotics. Unfortunately the dark side of the Internet would also be taking advantage of the new speeds to distribute spam and launch attacks. Like all good tools, the better our Internet connection is, the more of both good and evil it can accomplish.

Public Secrets

If the door is ajar, do I have the right to enter? In the 13 years that I have been using the Internet, and especially in the earlier years, there have been many opportunities to take advantage of back doors that were left wide open. It has been my personal ethic to always pass up the back door and enter through the front, but did I in fact have the right to enter through the back if I chose to do so?

One school of thought says that any data that has not been secured is automatically free to everyone. This thinking is flawed. If I leave my laptop alone in the library while I search for a book, is it free to the first person who comes along? They might take it, but they can expect penalties. A peeping Tom also takes information that is publicly available, but they can expect punishment as well.

There is an ethical right to take information that was intended to be given. If the intention was for the information to remain private, then ethically the public has no right to it. In most cases the intent will be obvious, but where it is not, the tie should go to privacy.

The Future of Genealogy

Will the work of genealogy ever be completed? There are an estimated 100 billion people who have ever lived on the Earth. In 1998 there were 13 billion names in the largest genealogical database. Supposing, perhaps optimistically, that by 2008 this has increased to 20 billion names, 1 in every 5 people who have ever lived on the Earth are accounted for. How much farther can computers and existing records take us? Where will future data emerge to help us track down the other 4/5ths of the Earths inhabitants? How can we ever hope to track down those who lived in societies without records, or societies of which we have no knowledge? Perhaps the answer is in our genes. Is it possible to study genetics and infer ancestors that must have existed? For this, I have no answer, merely conjecture.

The Age of Application

As I study Computer Science, I am often surprised at the timeline of discoveries. It is easy to assume that the greatest advances in Computer Science happened within the last twenty years because of the proliferation of computers in that period. In fact, most of the fundamental algorithms were developed in the 60s and 70s, some even earlier. Arpanet, which would eventually become the Internet, has its roots in 1969. Machine learning, a branch of Computer Science that still feels futuristic, was being developed intensely in the early 80s.

Technologies emerging from Computer Science go through two phases. First is a phase of discovery and initial development. During this phase the science itself is fleshed out thoroughly, but is applied narrowly. Second is a phase of wide application. This phase usually begins when hardware and manpower catch up to the science. A good current example is natural language processing. The science was fleshed out in the 80s and 90s, but now that hardware has caught up and a large number of programmers are developing NLP software, NLP is emerging into the mainstream.

Ethics in Critical Software

If a software error causes harm to a user, should the software developer be held responsible? If the software developer was clearly negligent in testing the software and ensuring its proper function, then yes the developer should be held responsible. However, if the developer thoroughly tested the code and it still caused a user harm, we enter an ethical gray area. Should the developer have tried more test cases? Is the software merely an implement by which the developer harms others the way a driver can with a vehicle? Perhaps the developer is guilty of manslaughter for negligently failing to test every possible input.

This thinking has two flaws. First, software of significant size or with analog input cannot have all possible inputs tested. For some software, testing all inputs would take longer than the life of the solar system, while others could never be fully tested. Second, the hardware that the software is run on has flaws of its own. There is no such thing as perfect hardware. Logic gates fail with very low probability, but high enough that it can happen. In short, it is not possible to guarantee that software will always work. In these situations, it is only ethical to release the developer from responsibility if they have done a good job of testing their software.

Music a la 2008

This blog post is written in response to yesterday's Ars Technica article: A brave new world: the music biz at the dawn of 2008.

Phonographs, records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, and now - CDs; all going the way of the dodo. Good riddance, I say. I can remember going to the store with my mom when she bought our family's first CD player. At the time we were willing to pay an arm and a leg for CDs because they were new technology. Who could have guessed that almost 20 years later we would still be paying the same high price? DVDs, on the other hand, have been around for less than half as long, cost far more to produce, and can regularly be found in five-dollar bins.

Why is the cost of music decreasing so much now that it can be purchased digitally? Is it because a CD costs so much to print and distribute? That is part of the equation, but it doesn't explain how DVDs can be shipped profitably for five dollars. Rather, CDs are monopolistic in nature, while digital music cannot sustain a monopoly. Sure, there are many music labels, but CDs are monopolistic because there is only one Radiohead. If you want to buy Radiohead, there is only one company that sells it, you have no alternative but to buy from them. However, digital music has competition in the form of file sharing networks. There is now more than one source of Radiohead. Music companies are forced to lower their prices to a level at which users are willing to pay for the new product of the music industry: legality and a clean conscience.

Leveling the Field

Perhaps the most important accomplishment of the Internet will be that it levels the playing field for many people around the globe. Thanks to instant communications and instant information, many jobs that were originally done in the United States can now be done elsewhere. This is great for others who are now able to participate in the global economy, but doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment for the laid-off worker whose job was outsourced. This situation brings to mind a line from The Incredibles: "When everyone's super, no one will be!" This may not be good news for Americans who are used to being the top dogs for the last century, but a level playing field is just what the world needs. While many jobs may be outsourced, there is plenty of opportunity in America for entrepreneurs to explore new technologies while employing workers domestically.

Equal opportunity for all, not just for Americans, is a worthy goal, but only time will tell if the Internet can be the great leveler.

We, Robot

The purpose of this blog: CS404 Credit
The secondary purpose: Mind dump
The tertiary purpose: Take over the world
-End Transmission-